The Voynich Ninja

(15-08-2017, 05:49 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.JKP,
I think Ruby Novacna felt confused because you made no mention of Koen Gh in your opening post. As my old philosophy teacher used to say, "it goes without saying, but it goes even better with saying".
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Thank you, VViews. I thought it was better to link the thread so it can be seen that the previous thread discusses various aspects of the plant and not just the head and I was hoping to target this thread specifically to heads.

I realize now that I shouldn't assume that forumites have seen and read the previous threads on similar topics since there are always new readers (and always posts that get missed by regular readers).

Here is one of the reasons I wanted to start a post specifically on the head...

Koen has pointed out some good parallels to images on coins and I think it would be difficult to find anything better, but I've been mulling over some ideas that I thought I'd put out there...


The first time I noticed the head I remember wondering whether it might be a self-portrait of the VMS mastermind. It was very common for scribes to insert themselves somewhere in their works, whether it was in an illuminated initial, a colophon, a riddle, or steganographic text (usually near the end). It's also possible that it's mnemonic, but I couldn't think of a really good memory-trigger that might fit both the head and the plant.


I also had other thoughts... maybe the head is not the creator of the manuscript, maybe it's one of the "heroes" of medieval authors (e.g., Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, Plato, Ovid, etc.). Images of classical authors and orators are mostly imaginary portraits, however, and one would have to find a close match to something extant to make a good argument for the VMS profile being one of these historical figures.


In a separate thought, I asked myself, if we had to guess whether the person who conceptualized this manuscript was more likely to be a supporter of the pope or a supporter of the Holy Roman Emperor, which would you guess?

My guess would be Holy Roman Emperor. There is a relative dearth of Christian religious imagery in the VMS but there might be references to the Holy Roman Emperor, such as the Ghibelline merlons, the crown with the cross (the iconic symbol of the HRE at the time), and perhaps a few others.


So... assuming this is a head in the tendril, and taking into consideration the head-wreath implied by the fruit and over-arching shape of the plant, could this head-tendril be a reference to emperors? The iconic image for emperors before the crown-with-a-cross was the head-wreath. Might the image in the plant be a Holy Roman Emperor of the late 13th or early 14th century?


I looked up some imagery of emperors. Unfortunately, many of the paintings of emperors are later re-creations or pure guesses as to how the person looked, but I found that Wenzel of Luxemburg (HRE 1378—1400) and Ruprecht II Wittelsback (1400—1410) were not usually depicted with full beards although there are some portraits of Wenzel from the front with long muttonchops (cheek beards). Ruprecht is usually shown clean-shaven or with a goatee. But I have noticed that later portraits of famous personages often tend to exaggerate the beards.

Charles IV of Luxemburg (1346–1378) is shown with a beard and was also king of Bohemia.
Sigismund of Luxemburg (1433–1437) is also shown with a beard, and was King of Bohemia, King of Italy, and King of Germany, thus briefly uniting a larger territory than his predecessor. When borders are dissolved (even temporarily), there tends to be more movement between regions and greater exchange of cultures, which may or may not have a bearing on the VMS imagery.


The Habsburgs took the crown in 1438 and they were known for their prominent noses and jutting lower lips and jaws, but they are not usually depicted with beards.

Getting back to Sigismund... in many portraits, Sigismund is not shown with a round lumpy nose or distinctive features like those of the Habsburgs, he could easily be Lithuanian, German, or Swedish. There are exceptions, however. There is one portrait in which he is shown with jutting nose and beard but I haven't been able to find the date and I suspect it's a later portrait.

There are some almost-contemporary portraits, however. Sigismund was featured on tarot cards from the mid-15th century in a straight-on pose, with a forked beard. Another emperor (unidentified and possibly iconic) with a long beard is shown in 3/4 view on a card that post-dates the Sigismund image by a few years.


In another tarot deck, Charles VI (King of France, b. 1380–1482) is shown on the emperor card in profile, with a long beard but not a particularly rounded nose. He was known as Charles the Mad and if the VMS plant were something like jimson-weed, henbane, or ergot, one might be able to find a parallel, but the plant looks more like a member of the Rumex family, or possibly Bryony. If it's Bryony, it is poisonous, especially the roots and berries, but I don't think it has a reputation for causing madness (the "Aminean bryony" used in Roman medicine was not the same as toxic Bryonia).




For the most part, the Roman Catholic church discouraged beards (although there were a few popes who thumbed their noses at convention). Beards came into fashion in the Vatican in the early 16th century and died out again at the end of the 17th century.


So, those are a few thoughts that crossed my mind.

Ruby: since I've been obsessed with tendrilface for apparently over a year now, I do think most people on the forum know where it came from and JKP posted with that in mind. But still, I appreciate your keeping track

I'm actually happy that other researchers start to realize as well that this profile is likely intentional. I remain with my initial thought that the plant is some type of vine and is hence linked to a Dionysian being (Pan or Silenos). All kinds of vines and crawlers (bindweeds) were holy to Dionysos and were worn by his followers in their hair.

It looks like this figure would have been well understood until about the 4th century, and again in the renaissance.

This profile doesn't have a beard, but it does have an unusual combination of head and plant (BAV Pal Lat 252):

If it's a beard, then it's a big bushy life long one. The 15th century beard fashion seems to have been for short beards or clean shaven. Beards were worn on pilgramiges and crusades (you promised not to shave until you completed the task). They were also linked to the military classes.
Jews of course were often depicted with their beards.
But the stylistic imagery of an elderly bewiskered man really brings to mind either a Sage or a personage of antiquity. It doesn't seem to fit with the 15th century fashion - flowing beards started to come into fashion in the next century, during the Renaissance.

I'm personally not inclined to see the "tendrilface" here (I mean I do "see" it but I don't think it's intentionally a face), however if we're going to look into beard trends, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has many links to medieval images of beards.
The images below are from those links, all 15th C.
Clearly, as davidjackson points out, there's less facial hair than in previous centuries overall, however we do find the long beard split in two down the center, which in a profile view would not be noticeably different from a regular long beard.
Also there are some shorter ones, and even a goatee.

The VMS archer has a very light goatee.

Is there a way we could test the probability that the profile was intentional? My initial motivation was that tendrils in other manuscripts generally don't look like this.

Sadly, it could be something as simple as the scribe finishing off the drawing and amusing himself by drawing it like a face when he realised it was going like that anyway.

Mind you, if you look at the 'tongue', there is an intentional bulge on the outer line. Accident? Intentional attempt to depict the tip of the tongue?
Also, what's that pencil like some at the end of the tendril?

Hi Koen Gh,
IMO, the first stop here is internal comparison.
The profile view is evidently not the Voynich artist's preferred choice for the representation of faces. Quite the contrary: there are hundreds of faces in the Voynich manuscript and not a single one of them is shown in profile.
If it was a profile, then this would imply that this particular image is of a wholly different inspiration (copied from a totally different source?) than all of the rest of the manuscript, or that it represents a person of a completely different nature or status from all the other people in the manuscript. And although its fun to speculate, it's not the sort of testable thing you're after.
Profile views versus other angles in human representation happens to be something I actually researched in an academic context. It is a very culture-laden stylistic element, a type of representation that doesn't just "happen" by chance. There are whole civilizations that simply don't "do" profile, while for others, it is the go-to style. It is plain to see that profile views are not a part of the Voynich artist's habit. Why would one suddenly appear here?
Also, the fact that "tendrils in other manuscripts generally don't look like this" doesn't heighten the probability that this is a face. To strengthen your hypothesis you'd need to find other examples of profiles made of plants.  AFAIK there's not much before Arcimboldo, and that's a century too late.

I am not denying that artists have hidden faces in works of art. It is rare, especially before the modern period. The first ever known instance of this is the rather well-known case of a face in profile in a cloud in Giotto's mural in the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi (1290).
But again, to my point above: profile views are habitual in Giotto's work, (as in Arcimboldo's btw) but not in the Voynich artist's.  So even this example actually doesn't strengthen your tendrilface hypothesis.
For fun: Can you spot the profile in the cloud?


Finally, I want to offer this map as a counter example: the lower landmass could be seen as an upward looking profile, with the same rounded features as your "tendrilface". Except it's not a face, just a landmass that sort of looks like one. 

Personally, (I mean no offence) but I think "tendrilface" belongs to the pareidolia category.